Several fire departments were called to Valley West Inn in West Des Moines around 3 a.m. Friday morning as a fire blazed through a tenant's room, said West Des Moines Fire Marshal Mike Whitsell.

When firefighters arrived, a second-floor room was engulfed in flames with "fire shooting out of the window," Whitsell said. A mother and three children were staying in that room.

As West Des Moines firefighters were crossing the Interstate-235 bridge to respond to the fire, they saw smoke coming from the building. They increased the response to a second-alarm fire and Clive and Urbandale fire departments also responded, Whitsell said.

"This is an older building. It was built in the early '70s," Whitsell said. "We had a well advanced fire in one of the rooms."

The mother and children were able to escape from the room, along with the rest of the tenants from the inn, Whitsell said. Emergency responders did not transport anyone to the hospital.

Firefighters contained the fire mostly to the room, but there were several challenges with battling the flames, Whitsell said. The extreme cold temperature caused water to quickly turn into ice and most people were also sleeping at the time.

However, one of the biggest challenges was the age of the building, Whitsell said.

Because the inn was constructed decades ago, the fire code for the building is also from that time.

That meant there were no fire alarms inside the rooms and there were no sprinklers in the building. Additionally, when a 911 dispatcher told the mother to pull the fire alarm, she had to break a glass enclosure to pull the switch, causing lacerations to her hand.

"Firefighters were pounding on doors to get people outside," Whitsell said. "We’re really fortunate to get everyone outside."

Polk County Emergency Management was on scene to help residents find shelter.

Investigators are determining what caused the fire in the three-story building, but so far it doesn't appear suspicious, Whitsell said.

"The inside of that room is destroyed by fire," Whitsell said. "Our investigators have got to work almost immediately to get this figured out."